Assessing the Bombing

FROM the very outset of the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations in Paris four months ago, the main obstacle to progress has been the issue of the continued bombing of part of North Viet Nam. Hanoi's representatives have adamantly clung to their long-held demand that the U.S. must stop bombing their territory before anything else can be discussed. The U.S. has persistently and unsuccessfully asked for assurances that Hanoi will reciprocate with some kind of de-escalation of its own once the bombing is stopped. No such assurances have been forthcoming. The result is that the talks have so far got nowhere and U.S. planes continue to hit military targets in the North Vietnamese panhandle south of the 19th parallel.

The Administration's arguments against a bombing halt rest on both military and political considerations. Understandably, U.S. generals want to take no more chances than they absolutely have to, and they want to keep allied casualties as low as possible. Stopping the bombing, they reason, would only result in heavier Communist infiltration, increasing the danger to allied fighting men—particularly the U.S. and Vietnamese troops in northernmost I Corps, which borders on the Demilitarized Zone. President Johnson reflected that view in a speech last month when he asserted that "we are not going to trade the safety of American fighting men for any Trojan horse." General Creighton Abrams, U.S. Commander in Viet Nam, has reportedly estimated that a halt to the bombing would permit a fivefold increase in Communist strength within a matter of days.

The air strikes do not, of course, prevent infiltration as it is. At best, some generals claim, bombing can knock out only 10% of sighted infiltration. But even that is valuable enough to the men charged with the conduct of the war and responsible for the lives of their men.

The military also fears that a bombing halt in the panhandle would allow the North Vietnamese to move artillery and jet fighters to the very rim of South Viet Nam, where they could operate with impunity at close range. But beyond such specific worries, U.S. military leaders also weigh a bombing pause in terms of momentum and morale. The air campaign is the only part of a frustrating war in which the allies exert control over the tactical situation and the pace of the action.

The political side of the case against a halt is less precisely stated. Essentially, it rests on the negative fact that no one in Washington has any idea if and how a halt would influence the Paris talks. Pessimists in the intelligence community are convinced that a unilateral U.S. concession would simply lead to another difficult demand by Hanoi. The North Vietnamese might well, for example, insist that since the U.S. and North Viet Nam had finished the pressing business between them, the U.S. could now go talk to the National Liberation Front about the rest of the war. That the U.S. is not eager to do: the Front controls neither infiltration nor force levels nor the Demilitarized Zone nor the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hanoi holds the key to all of those. And negotiations with the N.L.F. would create major problems for the South Vietnamese government.